


Blood, Guts, and Angel Cake

by WatchMyFavesSuffer



Category: Gossip Girl (TV 2007)
Genre: Angst, Bulimia, Character Study, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, If You Squint - Freeform, Love Triangle, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:27:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27526123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WatchMyFavesSuffer/pseuds/WatchMyFavesSuffer
Summary: "Blair is 14 and her hunger is bottomless. She has her life figured out and it involves frequent trips to Paris, a Birkin bag in every color, and a hot but sort of faceless husband who’s name she can drop and get a table at any restaurant she wants."An exploration of Blair's bulimia, pre-season 1. Some Chair vibes or some van der Waldorf vibes, depending on how you look at it.
Relationships: Blair Waldorf & Chuck Bass, Blair Waldorf & Nate Archibald, Blair Waldorf & Serena van der Woodsen, but only peripherally - Relationship
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15





	Blood, Guts, and Angel Cake

Blair is 14 and her hunger is bottomless. She has her life figured out and it involves frequent trips to Paris, a Birkin bag in every color, and a hot but sort of faceless husband whose name she can drop and get a table at any restaurant she wants. She’s not sure what exactly her job will be, but she knows it involves an executive’s corner office and tastefully accessorized cocktail-length dresses. Boys bore her (even sweet Nate, who fits neatly into her plan and whom she can almost convince herself she loves) but she still wants them all following her, tails wagging, ready to carry her shopping bags or kiss her hand or tell her how ravishing she looks in her Alaïa dress.

She goes to Dylan’s Candy Bar with Serena one day. They have every flavor of lollipop and licorice and jelly bean the world has ever known. She can picture herself, clearly, eating every last drop of candy in the store, licking the leftover grains of sugar from her fingers, until her teeth hurt and her stomach aches and her brain trips sickly loops around a sugar high.

If Serena is as giddy-hungry as Blair, she gives no sign of it. She’s busy smiling at a boy in a Horace Mann varsity jacket standing by a display of rock candy. Blair, who’s palms are itching to grab food, now, all of it, everything sweet and pretty and able to be chewed up, hesitates. Serena’s legs look divine in jeans. Serena’s collarbones are needle-thin and needle-sharp and her stomach is perfectly flat. Blair is pretty sure that if she were willing to lower herself to wearing jeans, her legs would look horrible. Her cheeks burn. The thought alone should be enough to kill her appetite, but her traitorous tongue still _wants_.

She primly puts a box of gummy bears and a box of chocolate- covered marshmallows in her basket and hands her black card to the cashier. She grips the shopping bag with white knuckles, reminds herself not to taste anything until she’s safely back in her apartment. Her goal for high school is to never eat in public (unless she’s with Serena, because she doesn’t want her to get worried and because she basically doesn’t count anyway. She’s like family, or something closer than family.) High-powered women with multiple Birkin bags are never seen to eat, of this she is certain.

When she gets back to her apartment, she tells Dorota not to disturb her under any circumstances and runs the bath. She strips down to her camisole and shorts, ties her hair back in a loose knot, and secures it with a headband. She is brisk, efficient, and the ritual of it already slackens the anxiety building at the base of her skull.

The act itself is fairly disgusting, she can admit. But, she reasons with herself, no more disgusting than getting drunk and sloppy in public like Serena, or fucking your way through the Greater New York Area like Chuck. Being on the Upper East Side is stressful, and everyone needs a way to deal with the pressure.

And when it’s done, when she’s eaten and thrown up all the marshmallows, and chewed up and spat out the gummy bears, she rinses her mouth out and scrubs the dirty feeling from her skin in the bath tub. She checks her jaw for swelling and gargles with mouthwash one last time before heading out. It’s like none of it ever happened.

Blair does leg lifts while she studies, then watches _Sabrina_ and compares the size of her waist to Audrey Hepburn’s. She avoids dinner on the pretext that her and Serena already ate a metric ton of candy at Dylan’s and she couldn’t possibly eat (she’s been making a lot of excuses lately, but this one has the benefit of being almost-true).

* * *

Serena is the one to force her to tell her mother, to make her show up to her psychiatrist’s office, but she isn’t the first one to notice.

That honor, of course, goes to one Chuck Bass.

She’s leaving the girls’ bathroom one day (jettisoning the croissant and chai latte she’d eaten with Serena on the Met steps) Chuck is skulking outside the door like a malevolent ghost. He’s pressed against a wall, so she doesn’t see him until he calls out after her. “Feeling okay, Waldorf?”

“Here to install a spy cam? Stay away from the girls’ bathroom, Bass.” She calls over her shoulder.

“Didn’t answer my question.” He replies. “Is our Queen B sick?”

She turns around with an exasperated sigh. “What are you getting at, Chuck?”

“Carter said he saw you at Le Pain Quotidien on 98th, making a suspiciously hasty retreat into the bathroom. Now, I don’t normally listen to swine like Carter Baizen, but you _do_ look very thin.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” She says, clipped, with murderous eyes.

“You look like hell, Waldorf. Of course, I would still gladly take you back to my room at the Palace, but…”

“Wow, I’m honored.” Blair rolls her eyes. “Now, if you’ll excuse me—“

“You’re the smartest girl at Constance, Blair. You know what you’re doing to yourself. I’m not gonna give you the health class talk, but I think you should stop.”

“Why should you care?” She scrutinizes his face for signs of laughter, of malice. _What was his game?_

He shrugs. “No one ever stops me from doing anything.”

He adjusts his scarf and walks away.

* * *

One day, Blair and Serena were splayed out on Blair’s bed, silent and cozy. The blonde looking up on at ceiling and the brunette is on her side, looking at the blonde. Serena is more than a little buzzed on some edibles she bought with Georgina, and suddenly asks “Would you rather be happy or interesting?”

“You’ve been reading too much Fitzgerald.” Blair rolls her eyes.

Serena rolls over to face her. “For real though, B.”

 _Happy or interesting?_ Blair rolls the phrase over in her head. “I don’t think I know anyone who’s happy,” she says. She thinks it through… _nope, nobody. Maybe Dorota?_ Happiness wasn’t something she thought about, really. _Beauty_ , she thought about. And power, and control, and romance. Being important. If she got those things, she would have to be happy, wouldn’t she?

“Except us,” Serena says, a warm nap-time feeling in her voice.

“Except us.” Blair echoes, even though she’s pretty sure they both know it’s a lie.

* * *

It‘s almost two years later when things start to go off the rails.

Serena throws Penelope a pre-birthday brunch at Butter Midtown. It’s appropriately trendy, a place where they’ll get champagne sent over despite their age and maybe a visit from the executive chef to make sure everything is to their liking. This is, of course, Blair’s preferred way to dine, but she still wants to strangle Serena for surrounding her with delicious food that she couldn’t even begin to guess the calories in (and, by the way, the place is called _Butter_ for a reason.) The restaurant has these long communal tables, and of course Serena got a reservation at the one in the very center of the restaurant, where everyone can stare and notice the size of her thighs and see if she’s eating or not.

“Serena, you know Chef Guarnaschelli, right? You can order for us.” Penelope says, her signature mix of malaise and desperation blazing in her cognac-colored eyes. 

“Okay, let’s get the endive and Bosc pear salad and the cheesy gnocchi with bacon breadcrumbs to start. Or should we get the Maldon sea salt fries? What do you think Blair? Blair?”

She’s focusing on how her legs look in her Chanel A-line skirt, and how they compare to everyone else’s at the table.

“What? Oh, I’m not getting anything. On a cleanse.” She throws on a bright pink-and-white smile.

“You were on a cleanse last week, B.”

“No, last week, I was on the radish and pickle diet.”

“What _ever_. It’s Penelope’s birthday! The cleanse can wait,”

Blair is about to point out that _no_ , it is not her birthday but her pre-birthday, which is not even close to a real thing, but then she catches sight of a waiter with a plate of cremini mushroom risotto balls and her will to argue evaporates.

“Okay then.” She primly hands the menu back to their waitress. “For starters, we want the gnocchi mac and cheese and two pitchers of Purple Paradise. Oh, and a basket of assorted baked goods and the di Paolo burrata flatbread.”

“They don’t even serve that until dinner, B.” Serena laughs.

“They’ll serve whatever we ask for, _S_.”

“The purple paradise has prosecco _and_ two types of vodka. Are you sure?” The waitress asks, eyebrows raised, sensing that her carefully-practiced tolerance for drunk trust fund babies is about to be strained.

“I’m sorry, do I look like the kind of person who doesn’t know what she wants? I want those drinks, or else I want you fired.” Blair smiles again, only 16 but already cruel, and flashy and fragile as a mirror. The blood hums through her veins, and she thinks about _owning_ things, possessing and devouring things. Blair _knows_ she’s powerful, she does, but she also knows most of the world looks at her like a breakable china doll, all soft brown hair and lace, pink soap and white gloves. As petty as it is, threatening to get someone fired makes her feel briefly unbreakable.

As the waitress returns to the kitchen, and the table’s conversation turns back to Gossip Girl and Trip van der Bilt’s latest haircut, she plans out the rest of the day. She’ll drink until she can no longer feel eyes on her, eat her appetizers, throw up. Order the brioche French toast with housemade berry marmalade and vanilla bean maple syrup, throw up. Raspberry beignets and sparkling water for dessert, throw up, order an herbal tea for her throat, which would be scratched and swollen and flayed open by then. Get home, shower the shame and sugar off, have Dorota hold her ankles while she does sit-ups.

She almost moans at how good the appetizers are. She may be a virgin, but there is something truly sexual happening in her mouth when bites down on handmade burrata with mission figs and chilies on buttery grilled bread. She is buzzed enough that the feeling of her skirt tightening against her stomach doesn’t deter her from licking the last bits of maple syrup from her fork when her entree is done. After her second trip to the bathroom, Serena texts her. _All good B?_

 _On my .!_ Then: _P.S. clingy is not a good color on you, S._

She slides her phone shut with an emphatic motion and turns back to checking her eyes for redness in the mirror. Reapplies her lipstick. Says to her reflection with a sharp-canined smile “You’re Blair Waldorf. Act like it.”

She feels empty and scratched-up inside. It is not a wholly unpleasant feeling. She drifts back to the table, her vision splitting and shimmying like a thousand fish wriggling through the air around her. Her throat feels vaguely like it's bleeding. She knocks back another glass of her purple cocktail and keeps smiling.

Third trip to the bathroom. Acid is rising in her throat before her fingers even get there. She starts at the sight of slight bruises on her knuckles, but resolves to blend them away with some foundation. Then she takes a deep breath and lets the smooth ovals of her manicured nails gouge at her esophagus. When the job is done, she notes with a sigh of relief that her stomach is once again perfectly flat.

Her legs feel strange. Unstable and disjointed, like the circuitry wasn’t connecting. A high-pitched whine was in her ears, getting louder. How long had that been happening? She goes to take a step and falters, grabbing a wall before she crashes to the ground.

 _Stupid_ , she thinks, _none of this would have happened if you hadn’t eaten._ _No self-control, that’s your problem._ She gently eases herself away from the wall and balances on her Prada heels back to the table.

* * *

Blair doesn’t eat for the rest of the weekend. The incident at Butter proved to her that if she eats, she’ll never stop. At night, she dreams of crushing cake under her fists, getting icing under her nails, of frozen diamonds chilling her cocktails and clinking against the cutting edges of her brilliant teeth.

Tuesday morning, and she still hasn’t brought herself to eat, pounding espresso shots instead to stay upright. She’s also been on European diet pills for a few months now, and they make her feel alert in sort of an unstable way, like she’s on incredibly high stilettos all the time. She has a French test second period and normally, she would study in the library on 96th— but that’s across from Luzzo’s Pizza and she can’t risk going in there and leaving with an order of their Nutella-filled zeppoli. So she’s on a bench in Central Park, shivering slightly in the early morning air, trying to force her eyes to focus on the page of subjunctive phrases.

 _Il faut que je ne mange pas,_ she writes. She laughs. It’s not actually funny; the caffeine must be getting to her. She runs a hand through her hair, sighing. She looks down in horror and sees strands of hair still clinging to her fingers. She blinks, hard, as though she might have imagined it. She knows hair loss is a symptom of malnutrition. She knows all the symptoms, actually, thanks to a round of late-night, panic-fueled Google searches. Which probably explains why she doesn’t get her period anymore. And why she’s freezing despite her Michael Kors trench coat.

She stands, wanting to walk around a bit and clear her head before she has to get to school. All the blood in her body stagnates—the world fizzes at the edges, then dims. Her hearing goes out entirely.

She’s only out for a matter of seconds. A man walking his dog saw her go down and is now kneeing over her. She tries to sit up and he presses her shoulder gently. “Are you alright, young lady?”

“Yes. I’m, uh, getting over a bad flu.” She eases herself back to sitting.

“Do you need me to call an ambulance? Or your parents?”

“No! Absolutely not. I need to wipe the park dirt off of my Fendi headband and get to school. I have a test.”

“Ahh yes, midterms. I remember those. Don’t work yourself too hard, sweetheart.”

She rolls her eyes, standing up and brushing some grit off of her Constance uniform. “Charming little trip down memory lane we’re having here. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

She picks her backpack up and walks away, willing her legs not to give out again.

She makes it to 5th and hails a cab. Her legs are shaking a little, but she gets herself into the car and directs the driver to Serena’s apartment.

Serena was pissed at her (with good reason— Blair barely remembered the details, but she knows she’d been a complete nightmare at Butter) but Blair prays she’ll answer the door. She’s not sure what time it is, her thoughts are all cotton candy-soft, but she hopes Serena hasn’t left for school yet. She sits down in the elevator, the high pitched whine in her ears making itself known yet again. Her fingers are cold when she presses them to her wrist to feel for a pulse. It comes slow and subdued despite the caffeine flowing through her bloodstream.

It occurs to her that she might actually die. That had never been the goal— but then she thinks of what Chuck said: _you’re the smartest girl at Constance_. _you know what you’re doing to yourself._ And she did. Maybe on some level, she’d rather be dead than boring, an ordinary person with ordinary looks and ordinary passions.

The elevator dings: she’s arrived at the penthouse. She looks up and Serena is standing there, a look of confusion melting into one of terror.

“B., what happened?” She sits down next to Blair and wipes the tears from her cheeks. She hadn’t even realized she’d been crying.

“I’m sorry S., I’m so sorry, please forgive me.”

“What, for being rude at Penelope’s birthday? It’s alright! I’ll forget all about it, okay? Okay, B?”

“No, not that. I— I’ve done some really stupid things, S.”

“Whatever it is, we can figure it out. But first, let’s get out of this elevator.” she laughs. She pulls Blair upright, who wobbles for a second before steadying. She places a hand on the wall.

“Are you sick?” Serena places the back of her hand against Blair’s forehead, like a mother, and Blair starts crying all over again.

Serena walks her to the van der Woodson’s dining room table. Blair collapses into the chair like a rag doll.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on? Did you get into a fight with Eleanor?”

Blair shakes her head and plays with the pleats in her skirt.

“B., you’re really freaking me out.”

“I haven’t eaten since Friday, and I haven’t kept down any food in…God, I don’t even know how long. And my hair is falling out and I feel like I’m gonna pass out and I’m probably overdosing on caffeine, which is probably why I’m talking so fast—“ She cuts off suddenly.

“Are you saying…?”

“Yes,” she cries out, the word riding on a chocked-back sob.

Serena rushes to her best friend and wraps her arms around her. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she whispers, sounding close to tears herself.

“I couldn’t, S, not to you.” They’re both crying freely now.

The elevator dings again. Stilettos clack across the hardwood. “Serena, you are supposed to be in first period right now! What did I say about—“ Lily turns the corner and sees them. She drops her shopping bags.

“Oh. Blair! Is everything alright?”

Serena straightens, sniffing and wiping back tears. “Mom, can you call Eleanor? I think Blair needs to go to the hospital.”

* * *

Serena sits with Blair in the ER, while their parents are on a conference call with the headmistress explaining their absence. Blair fidgets with the stiff hospital sheets. They had taken her blood (Serena was relieved to see Blair was still, well, _Blair_ enough to snap at the phlebotomist for missing the vein on the first try), given her a bed, a glucose drip and a paper cup of orange juice, which she now eyed with suspicion.

“Pretty stupid, huh?” Blair says quietly. “The whole Kate Moss act, I mean.”

“You’re not stupid, B. You’re sick.”

“Both can be true.”

“How long have you been—“

“Puking my guts up? Three years.”

“Oh God,” Serena’s eyes sparkle with tears again. “How did I not notice?”

“No one noticed,” Blair says quietly. _Well, not no one,_ she thinks, _Chuck did._

Lily peeks her head through the flimsy hospital curtain. “Blair, darling, your mother wants to know if you’re willing to see visitors? Nate and Charles are in the waiting room.”

 _Chuck?_ Despite everything she knows about him, there is mounting evidence that Chuck Bass _cares_.

“Um, could you tell them to come back later? I look a mess and I’m still a little out of it— I wouldn’t want him to see me like this.”

“Of course, sweetheart.” Lily says with a sad smile and leaves again.

“You don’t want to see Nate? He’s probably really worried about you.”

In truth, Blair hadn’t been thinking about Nate at all.

“I just want to be here with you for a while. If that’s alright?”

Serena leans forward and squeezes Blair’s hand. “Of course that’s alright. And I’m not going to leave until I see you drink that juice— and eat something.”

Blair smiles weakly and nods.

“You really scared me back there.” Serena says, her voice laced with tiny cracks, like a vase moments from shattering.

“I know.”

* * *

They hold her overnight for observation, then let her go with a referral to a psychiatrist and a prescription for potassium supplements. (Her electrolyte levels apparently mirror those of a corpse.) She gets a makeup date for her French test and no one at Constance even knows anything happened. She has convinced her mother that eating lunch on the Met steps, rather than supervised at the nurse’s office as the ER doctor suggested, is not only a necessity to stave off complete social irrelevance, but also essential to her inner harmony as a person.

That’s where she’s headed— sitting in the Constance/St. Jude’s courtyard waiting for her minions (and, of course, Serena) to get out of class so they can head to the steps together— when the skulking, ominous, flat-ironed presence of Charles Bartholomew Bass swings by.

“Has no one ever told you it’s rude not to let someone in when they’ve come to visit you?” It’s the kind of blithe, smarmy, glib remark he always opens with. Maybe she was wrong; he doesn’t care. He just came by to see the freak show.

“What do you want, Bass?”

He looks strangely sheepish, like he wasn’t expecting such a curt response. He clears his throat and shuts down the look of vulnerability in his eyes. “Just wanted to know how our princess was feeling.”

“As if you care.”

“You wound me, Waldorf. Why do you assume I don’t care?”

“Because that requires a human heart capable of generating emotions.”

“I experience plenty of emotions: arousal, boredom, disgust. And, believe it not not, very occasionally, something like human empathy.” He smiles wryly at her.

“Well, I’m doing fine, thank you.”

“Are you going to see a shrink?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I am.”

“Are they an eating disorder specialist?”

“I—I don’t know.” She looks at him quizzically; what could he _possibly_ be getting at?

“Are you going to go to the Ostroff Center?"

“ _Why_ are you asking me all these questions? Investing in a health insurance company? Sending the details of my medical records to Gossip Girl?”

“I've never been to a funeral, Blair. And I don't think yours would be a good first time." 

Was that— _sweet_? Blair is searching for something to say when Chuck takes off; he must have spotted Blair's minions approaching. 

"What was that all about?" Isabel asks.

"Just— Chuck Bass being Chuck Bass," Blair says absently. 

Serena sidles up to Blair as they walk up Fifth. "What did Chuck say to you?"

"Nothing. Just, uh, flirting in his standard sociopathic way."

"He's not going to tell anyone about what happened, right?"

"I actually don't think he will."

"Well, what did Nate say? I'm sure he was so worried."

He had met Blair that morning, his eyebrows knit together in that puppy-dog look of concern, and carried her books to school like it was he fifties. He was sweet, and worried, and nervous about saying the wrong thing. Blair wonders if that's what being married to him would be like. Happy, in an uninteresting way. Blair thinks she might love him, or at least she wants him to show her off and brag about being hers. Then again, maybe that _was_ love. But she didn't _crave_ him, the way she craves— well, almost everything. She thinks about the way Serena loves her, the honey-flavored love of something closer than sisters. She thinks of Chuck, whose favorite candy is red hots, and it's fitting because they're marketed like they're painfully spicy but they're actually sort of sweet. Chuck doesn't love her, of course, and possibly doesn't even _like_ her, but the stutter of her heart when he approached her in the courtyard was bright red like cinnamon. 


End file.
